“I think North and Luca might be too.” I blow out a breath.
“Hot.”
“Deeply.”
“And all three smell that good?”
“Yes,” I mutter. “Like, stupidly addictive and I want to press my face into them and stay there until I forget my own name.”
Then, very gently: “Adelaide.”
“What?”
“That is not a casual crush.”
I know, and that’s the problem, so I stare at the TV, having no idea what show is playing. “I just got here. Anyway, I miss you,” I tell her.
“I know. I miss you too. Now go to sleep in your suspiciously luxurious beach shack and dream of your terrifyingly attractive Alphas.” A pause. “Have you looked them up on social media?”
“Should I?”
“The one called Luca Lance.” I can hear her smiling. “Go to his Instagram right now.”
I find it in seconds, which is because I have efficient search skills, full stop, end of discussion. He comes up immediately, and I scroll.
Oh.
“Clio.”
“I know.”
The entire grid is Luca. Post-surf mode Luca, gym Luca, standing on a beach at sunset Luca. Every single photo is of him, usually without a shirt, always flexing those huge muscles. The follower count is in the high hundreds of thousands, and the comments section is an international incident of mostly women drooling.
“He’s a complete show-off,” I say.
“You’re loving it, aren’t you?”
I keep scrolling, and my thumb catches the edge of a photo at the wrong angle. It’s Luca fresh out of the ocean, board tucked under one arm, water dripping down his chest and disappearinginto a pair of dangerously low board shorts that leave absolutely nothing to the imagination about the general geography of the situation. I go to flick to the next image, but instead I’ve double-tapped and the heart appears. I desperately try to unclick it but end up sending him an emoji. “Shit!”
“What?” Clio asks.
“I accidentally sent him an eggplant.”
There’s a beat of silence, and then she starts laughing hard.
“I sent him a dick emoji,” I hiss, because humiliation apparently likes clarity. “To his surfing photo. In front of six hundred and forty thousand people.”
That makes it worse. Clio’s gone now, fully useless, cackling into the phone while I jab at the screen trying to undo my life.
“It was an accident,” I say, half to her and half to the universe. “My thumb just slipped.”
“Can you delete it?”
“I’m trying.”
I hit the screen again, and in the frantic chaos, my phone sends a second reaction. Then a third. I stare in horror. Now there are two eggplants and a water splash.
A whole narrative. A filthy, deeply regrettable narrative.
